#HelmetPardy Cancelled!
This was to be an Un-Official initiative for the Blackhawks game on Thursday night in a salute or mocking of the fan who ripped off Pardy's helmet when the glass collapsed at the last meeting between the two teams at the United Centre.
TNSE and more specifically Mark Chipman put out a press release and made an announcement at 12:30 today discussing this plan. Mark and the Jets are asking the fans not to bring their helmets to the game. It makes sense. Emotions run hot at games and all it takes is one idiot to do something immensley stupid and others will surely follow. Just look at the fans in Chicago. After the helmet was ripped off the perp's girlfriend poured beer on Pardy and others around cheered and high-fived them.
While it's one of the few, if ever, times the Jets have had to manage crowd and fan behavior in such a hasty public manner it makes sense. Get the chant going "Hel-met Par-dy!" but keep it safe folks. That's all that's being asked, no more no less.
Now back to regular programming.
The Jets, Fenwick and Stagnation-Exciting Really!
Once in a while I like to look through some stats. I’m not a ‘statistical thinker’ and I often confuse correlation with something else but it doesn’t deter me from enjoying the revolution that we are seeing with hockey and statistics use right now. Even if I’m far from competent in using the vast amounts of data we now have I try to make sense of it and tell a story, or provide a narrative.
After the ‘Debacle on Donald’ from Monday night I posted a graph from
Extra Skater in the comments section in reply to some one who made a ‘stats’ comment. I posted a picture of the Fenwick chart for the game in response and more than a few people commented that they did not know what it meant. I’m not going to try and decipher every new statistical category but I will try and give you a summary of where the Jets are and might be going.
The narrative for the Jets is hard because the only clear trend is ‘inconsistency’ but we won’t beat that horse down again. Anyone who follows this team knows that trait is what the team is and has been since it’s arrived in Winnipeg.
Yesterday
Garret Hohl posed a question about the Jets, when do they buck stagnation? It’s a good question and if a team is stagnant are they actually inconsistent?
The answer to that second question is rather simple- the inconsistency is causing the stagnation. The team can never progress and move higher in the standings because it can never play consistent hockey and win more games than it currently does.
After the 23 games the Jets are 10-10-3 for 23 points. It’s the identical record to the last two years in Winnipeg at this point. (Garret pointed this out yesterday). It’s stagnation and a bit of regression as in 2010, the Thrashers had 25 points.
Frankly it’s more of the same thing, the insufficient results that prevent this group from reaching the post season, year after year after year. Now the question so many are asking is when and how does this pattern change?
I would add one other aspect to the question, who changes the pattern?
This is not going to be some long-winded piece about moving players, changing the coach or firing the GM as that horse has received more than it’s fair share of abuse too.
“Past actions are the best predictor of future behavior”
That’s a quote from my wife who has quite an interesting understanding of human behavior from her profession. It applies in far more situations than simply therapy or treatment, as a more famous quote in this vein is “those who fail to study the past are doomed to repeat it”.
Here is the 5 vs 5 close graph of Fenwick performance for the Jets in close score situations.
Jets Performace Graph
According the
Jets Stats Guy the Jets have played 78% of their games in a ‘close’ situation at within 1 goal or less of the opposition. That makes sense judging by all the shoot out decisions they have had.
After 10 games the Jets were 4-5-1
If you keep that chart open and compare the record to each bar for each game something interesting happens. The blue bar above the line represents the Fenwick percentage, good results are positive and bad ones tend to be negative anything close is average.
Game 1 =W positive
Game 2 =W near even 48.8%
Game 3 =L negative
Game 4 =L negative
Game 5 =L negative
Game 6 =W near even 48.8%
Game 7 =L negative 16.6%
Game 8 =W near even 49.1%
Game 9 =L positive 53.1%
Game 10=OTL positive
Let’s take a close look at a few of these games. Games 2 and 6 stand out as they were just below an even 50% so what happened there?
In game 2 against the King Quick played to a .852 save percentage and Pavelec played .010 higher than his career average to .917. In game 6 Montoya pitched a shut out against New Jersey despite his team being less than 50% in Fenwick results.
What about game 7 that looks ugly. It sure does and despite firing 32 shots at Price the Jets gave up two first period goals and could never get themselves back into a ‘close situation’ and Price shut them out.
Game 8 had the Jets and Blues go to a shoot out with the Jets coming out on top. That game Elliot pitched a .897 save % and Pavelec stuck to his comfort zone a .906 and boom a goalie played worse than he did and they Jets eventually won in a relatively even Fenwick game.
Here are the next 10 games.
Game 11 =OTL positive
Game 12 =W near even 48.6%
Game 13 =L negative
Game 14 =L negative
Game 15 =L positive
Game 16 =W positive
Game 17 =L negative
Game 18 =W positive
Game 19 =W positive
Game 20 =W negative 36.4%
What stands out here to me is games 11, 15 and 20. In game 11 the Jets lost to the Preds in OT and while Pavelec had a better than (his) average game Preds goalie Hutton was amazing a .944 and that’s how close games go, win some lose some. Game 15 is the 5-1 home loss debacle to Chicago. After the start of the second period there was nothing ‘close’ in this game as the Hawks broke it wide open but in the first when the game was close in score Winnipeg out shot the visitors which is why they had a positive Fenwick.
Game 20 is also worth noting as that was the shoot out in over Detroit in Motown. In that game Pavelec posted a .953 save % as the Jets were out shot 43-2. The goalie kept it close in score but the skaters in front did nothing to help much but chalk those two points up to Ondrej.
So what we’ve seen here is that Fenwick in ‘close’ situations is somewhat reliable as far as wins go however it does not tell the ‘whole’ story as has been noted in different games.
If you go to the graph on Extra Skater right below the bar graph I cited you will see a cumulative graph on Fenwick and where the Jets currently are (48.1%). It’s close to dead even and that pretty much mimics what the Jets are in the standings, dead even at points earned from available points. Similar to past years and a prime example of stagnation as Garret pointed out.
While the fix or change that has to happen still remains a mystery one could say that aiming for more Fenwick events at a close score is a good thing. When looked at a bit differently the Jets at even strength in ‘close’ situations are only scoring 1.83 per 60 minutes of play. More troubling is there rate of goals allowed 2.83 per 60 minutes. So the Jets are giving up one goal more every 60 minutes of play than they score and as Jets Stats Guy points out they are playing in close situation 78% of the time.
There may be some luck involved in the outcomes but I think it’s fair to say this team gets outplayed, outworked, and out-hustled when the score is close more often than any team would like. Watching the games a bit more closely in a close situation can probably back up that statement. There is a sliver lining as that second graph shows as the Jets are trending up. The cloud surrounding that silver lining is that the Jets’ 5 year average Fenwick close at 5 vs 5 is 48.6%. The different between the first 10 games and the second is only 2 points though: 4-5-1 vs 5-4-1.
If the Jets want to see their fortunes change that cumulative trend has to start pushing the 50% or higher mark. That’s the ‘how’ part and it will be interesting to see if the team rides the trend up for a bit, hoping things are getting to historical marks or make a change of some sort to address play.
However historical average as noted above is far from acceptable, thus here we are pointing right back to stagnation and the same old targets, players, coach, and general manager…again. Sigh.
Winnipeg Jets Blogger •Winnipeg Jets Writer • 
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